


Tiger Squadron: The Kyriion Crisis

by BaelPenrose



Series: Tiger Squadron [3]
Category: Military Science Fiction - Fandom, Original Work, Original science fiction - Fandom, Science Fiction - Fandom
Genre: But there are otters, Genocide, HFY, Humans are space orcs, Hurt/Comfort, Multi, PTSD, Plague, Space Battles, Space Otters - Freeform, Specifically a sentient plague that commits genocide, codependent relationships, humans are crazy, just the nopiest nope ever of a disease, so that's just a double up "Nope" right there, utter lack of smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-09
Updated: 2020-04-09
Packaged: 2021-03-01 20:55:23
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 6
Words: 7,982
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23553406
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BaelPenrose/pseuds/BaelPenrose
Summary: More about the mysterious plague is discovered and a new threat emerges.
Series: Tiger Squadron [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1695037
Kudos: 8





	1. The Survivors that Didn't

The mission of this day was an easier one. The world was dead, but the beacon planted on it by a race that had gone extinct claimed to have some information about the spread of the disease, and records indicated this world’s people had survived significantly longer during the horror of the Kyriion plague than anything else in the sector. Perhaps they’d discovered something of use?  
At least, that was the hope. The Seeker began lowering towards the planet, everyone fully covered in hazardous materials gear, Adisa taking the lead as usual. She and the Ivari science officer, along with two other security personnel and a Dembra engineer, began sweeping the settlement. The horribly disfigured bones, those were consistent with the spasms that Kyriion induced towards the ending phases of death, often severe enough that the bones, already weakened and decalcified by the disease, would be twisted out of shape. The thing that was unusual though was the degree to which many of the bodies remained unburied, unburned, as though the locals had simply stopped caring.  
Ensign Anders, the two surviving members of Tiger Squadron having taken voluntary demotion, rang in. “System mostly dead. Weird satellites still active, but on a set rhythm in terms of pinging. Move weirdly, not solely on orbit. Gravatic scanners indicate a black hole not too far away, as well.”   
“Thank you, Ensign. Get closer to the planet, and if the shuttle is compromised by the disease in any way, be prepared to slag us all to death, understood? There is no reason, none at all, that anything infected should be allowed back aboard that ship. Clear?” Lt. Dala signaled affirmative.   
Adisa swept the village. A handful of living organisms were moving around, rodents, insects. The incinerator unit undermounted to her weapon made short work of them. If it moved in this area, it died. The Ivari science officer had been very clear on that front. Absolutely any animal, some plants and most fungi could carry Kyriion.  
The bones in the area were hideously distorted, but many of them had been broken by something that seemed to have been an actual tool. When Adisa pointed this out, the Ivari nodded. “It looks like necrosis of the outer layers of the body at the beginning, maybe they thought they were dealing with something else and decided to amputate? Though if that were the case, they wouldn’t just be lying here.” Adisa pointed to where the wounds were.  
“Not likely. I don’t know about whatever these things were but can we assume they work like most vertebrates and die when you sever the brainstem, or insert something into it?” The officer nodded, then saw the point where the wound was. “Oh. Mercy killing? But if that was the case, why does it look like something was pried out? They might have been getting samples to study the virus…but that implies it was early on, in which case the bodies would have been buried or burned or disposed of, somehow.”  
He looked up. “We’re going to enter that structure, seems to be the source of the beacon.”   
The first room in the structure contained a wide assortment of mechanical parts, and a lot of hideously warped skeletons, plus a body in some sort of sterile preservative fluid, partially rotted, its eyes oozing out of their sockets, with what looked like spikes of bone sticking out its back. The inhabitants of this planet had been amphibian, at a guess, but to look at the corpse they had some form of feathers as well. Four legs, two arms, lower body in a diamond pattern. The next room contained dozens of notes that the ivari officer poured over carefully before shaking his head. “They seem to realize there isn’t anything a living body can do against Kyriion. Vaccines lead to full bore infection, the virus is intelligent.”  
Adisa kicked open another door and swept the next room, spotting the emitter system almost immediately. Around the room were strange mechanical systems. Some of them were four-legged robots, seemingly ones that had gone inactive centuries ago and hadn’t moved since. The Ivari science officer began studying the signal, the diagrams, and spoke, quietly.  
“This is an incredible achievement of science. If I’m reading this right, the people who lived here were being destroyed by the virus, but they were extremely skilled with the neural mapping, and they figured out how to store their consciousness in machine bodies, figuring that non-organic bodies would be immune to the ravages of the plague. Incredible…but they seemed to discover, at least with the early test subjects, an imperfection in copying.” Adisa was distracted by the beacon, which continually pulsed out a signal that read as “The answer to the Kyriion infection” and she offhandedly deactivated the beacon…  
“It seems that in lieu of contact with the rest of their species, the survivors…if you can call them that…set up a beacon and powered down while they waited for others to come along and utilize the rest of their discovery. They seem to have come to believe that organic life is the cause of the disaster…”  
Organics are to be saved from the plague or submitted to mercy protocol. Surrender any weapons and submit to treatment.  
The ancient machines, built to contain the minds of their makers and hold them safe against an interstellar apocalyptic plague had come to life, and the comms from Tiger Squadron rang out with worry.   
“The satellites came to life and…oh fuck that moon is full of them. They’re attacking, what the hell happened?”   
Adisa wheeled her grav gun around and put six shots each in the two Sythnetics closer to her. “Landing party fall back to the shuttle!”


	2. Hope This Works

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When "get them sucked into a black hole by straddling the event horizon" is the plan, you know it's bad.

The landing team fled the bunker, Adisa mowing down the mechanical shells that held the consciousness of organic beings. Well, “Mowed down.” She had gunned down the first two with no difficulty, the remaining two were using cover, shielding themselves with bursts of energy now that that had booted up. The Dembra engineer screamed as his suit was violated and he fell onto the bones of a Kyriion victim. The machines began spiking him to the operating table and Adisa shot him through the head in a mercy kill. “Keep moving!” They started sprinting away, through the desolated ruins of the village. “Shit shit….” Adisa was tempted to throw a grenade but wasn’t sure how much risk she wanted to take that the concussive effect wouldn’t rip open the suits in this dense atmosphere. Or aerosolize virus that supposedly went into stasis on decayed or decaying matter to avoid dying out. 

“Shuttle, move into position and prepare for aggressive decontamination…” she said, flailing her flamethrower over a group of wooden buildings in hopes of giving them a smokescreen. And also burning out the virus, which the Ivari had assured her couldn’t survive an open frame. The blasts from the machines searing through the air behind them, felling two of the security personnel, one of whom died instantly and the other, noting that he was likely infected, simply fired off all but his last round at their pursuers…and saved the last for himself. “Keep moving!”

Dust storms were kicking up ahead of them and Adisa and the Ivari science officer pushed forward through it. “Where the hell is the shuttle!?”

“Just keep moving.” Through the dust the silver-blue blaze of ion drives was barely visible and Adisa and the science officer sprinted for it, getting in and taking off. “Get us out of here, and bomb whatever structures are in the area. Just slag them with nuclear weapons or whatever you need.”

The pilot nodded, then took off.

****

“TIGER SQUARDON, FANGS OUT!” There was a part of both of them that thrilled in this, dancing in the void against scores of opponents, and exulted in hearing the old battle cry again. Another part of them that hated to hear it again, knowing they were all that was left of Tiger Squadron. 

Jake and Callie had little time to reflect on any of that. The enemy attacking Adisa and the landing party had fighter craft, and those craft were giving them problems. There was a single ship which seemed to be some sort of carrier, but the fighters that deployed from it wove around with perfect synchronicity of the enemy craft was nigh impossible to counter, and no matter what the two of them did the enemy only seemed to need to lose a few to it before they figured out a counter that had the two starfighter veterans riding the ragged edge of disaster to avoid it. “Shit. Jake, you’ve got one on your tail. Sweep left.” Jake obeyed and Callie blasted the target off his back, while Jake dived and swept up to perforate the belly of the fighter that had started pursuing Callie. “Goddamnit what the…” He fired swarm rockets, forcing the enemy to scramble to avoid getting hit, only to run into Callie’s cloud of rockets. That bought them breathing room as another wave was about to deploy. “Alright, fuck this. They’re going to chase us. Let’s give them an interesting course.”

“Tiger Squadron, you may need to retreat. The enemy are a synthetic intelligence, they’re perfectly co-ordinating because they’re literally networking.” 

Callie smiled. “Exactly. There’s a black hole in the next system that would screw with any light-wave communication. Plot a course for three centimeters out from the event horizon. They network? Let’s see them follow us.” 

“The flaw in that plan, Lieutenant, is that any work your autopilot you can do they can almost certainly do better.”

“Who says we’re using autopilot? You’re right, computers can’t keep a course that tight,” said Jake, evading the first few shots from the approaching enemies, “that’s why this’ll work. Because we can. Plot the course and patch it through to our HUDs.”

“Alright.” The course was patched through the HUDs, and Tiger Squadron’s sleek ships, the Saber fighters that had awed the rest of the galaxy with the insanity of their design, whipped through the enemy formations without firing, simply avoiding the attacks. “I consider it an obligation to warn you that this plan is unwise and highly likely to result in your deaths.”

Missiles streaked past and were evaded by centimeters. “You know we keep hearing that, but it never quite works out that way.”

“Good luck, humans.” The navigation officer watched the two streak into hyperspace to the next system as the enemy ships burst into pursuit. Those two human kids were going to get themselves killed. Captain Kilint ordered the officer to maximize power to the shields as another small squadron attacked the ship.

The course around the black hole was a tight one. Merely centimeters off and death by gravity well was certain. The enemy were following closely, Jake and Callie completely depowering their shields, relying on sheer skill and speed to avoid the plasma bolts and gauss gun rounds ripping through the void behind them. The first few enemy fighters began drifting too close to attempt to get an angle and began slipping in, towards the event horizon. Jake and Callie accelerated, the course only getting tighter, more frightening as the speed increased. Even the slightest error meant death. “Careful, careful…” 

A few more of the myriad enemy started drifting into the maw of space and gravity. The majority of the enemy were still pursuing. “Alright, time to do something stupid. Straddle the horizon itself. Our exit will be made at hyperspace, and we have a window of 1.2 seconds to fire those drives to get back to the Horizons, mistiming will result in winding up radically off-course.” At this point, the enemy fire was being pulled into the black hole, off-course enough to reliably miss. “Jake, NOW!”

The slight adjustment of course was terrifying. Too little meant the enemy would be able to catch them. Too much was a death sentence. The Synth fighters were getting closer and held course. “Come on, come on, come on, come one, motherfucker…” lightwave communications were failing, so Callie and Jake couldn’t hail and reassure each other, but the perfect synchronicity that made the Synths so dangerous was likewise being crippled, wobbling more and more, falling across the event horizon in ever greater numbers until finally, only a single three-fighter wing remained. The exact moment to fire hyperspace drives came and the ionic discharge as the Tiger Squadron caught the remaining enemy fighters in the electrostatic burst that pushed them just off enough to be sent, spinning and desperately firing their thrusters in a vain attempt to escape, into the crushing abyss of gravity.

The two crimson and azure striped Sabers flashed back into standard space on the other side of the enemy carrier from the Horizons mere minutes later, firing their heavy warheads into the Synth carrier almost immediately upon exit from the atmosphere, ripping the ship apart. The remaining enemy fighters were quickly and ruthlessly picked off.

Callie hailed the Horizons, a wicked grin on her face. “Told you. Machines aren’t much of a match for humans. They just don’t adjust fast enough. The landing party get back?”

“Yes. Well done, Tiger Squadron. We’re going to hold to decontaminate the shuttle before you enter the hangar, but we have a problem. If the beacons of this wavelength and frequency were set up by the species who did this…we have a problem.”

“Understood.”


	3. Disaster at Inorith

The Seeking Horizons approached the beacon at the edge of the Inorith system, with its two escorts fully reloaded on every weapon system their Sabers carried. The fighters had already exited the ship, prepared to fend off just about anything as the exploration craft came closer. It was all the more vital that they did, now that the chief of shipboard security had been transferred to other duties. 

The planetoid the beacon was coming from was small, and scanners indicated that it likely didn’t contain any life. Which was now rather unsurprising. We were no longer really anticipating finding life. Captain Killint had already communicated to both his own people and the rest of the Federation that there were serious concerns about those beacons, and Star Marshall Maria Gonzalez had promised to look into it when the Assembly allowed her to spare forces from a developing crisis involving a disastrous increase in piracy coupled with a very dangerous political coup from a sector mostly held by corporate interests, on the border with the Vulpexi Remnant.

Given that the secessionist areas were mostly mining systems worked by drones and we were looking at a potential existential threat, I wasn’t wholly sure that that was an intelligent dispersal of our forces but money talks in politics. 

The beacon itself wasn’t the problem. We scanned it and found none of the Synthor, as we’d come to call the beings who’d transferred their consciousness to machines to escape the ongoing galactic holocaust-by-sapient-plague, but that didn’t mean much. There was a huge structure in this system, and absolutely every shred of everything Jake and I had learned during the Vulpexi war was screaming for us to turn back. Jake hailed the ship and voiced as much. “Captain, I think whatever that is, we need to pull back and let Lion Fleet take care of it with some nova bombs or something. That’s pretty close in mass to a Dembra Megastructure and we have exactly nothing strong enough to destroy it.”

“I understand your concern, Ensign. However, given the current situation, I’m afraid we have little choice but to investigate further. Our own communications officer will be attempting to penetrate the encryptions on that signal to see if anything can be determined about the Synthor, or indeed perhaps a way to defuse the situation with them.”

“Captain, with all do respect I strongly recommend that we retreat. According to Adisa they opened fire the instant they saw organic life. Not seeing much benefit to probing it.”

Killint had been less and less interested in taking our advice of late, ever since we’d sat him down and asked a fair few pointed questions about whether or not the Ivari had neglected to mention anything else to races they seemed to believe were less advanced. He’d not reacted well to our accusation, but after you find out that the race that mapped the galaxy were also hiding from an interstellar omnicidal sapient plague, you get to start asking fairly harsh ones. 

“I appreciate that you’ve seen more than your share of wars. Truly I do. But this is a situation that does not require force, and as your species gets more and more militant it might be positive to attempt to defuse conflicts going forward than to force that development further.” His tone was clipped, as though forcing himself to say the words, as though afraid.

So that’s what his reluctance was about. In the aftermath of the war, and in the pirate problems that had followed while Jake and I recovered on our adoptive homeworld of Tildas, humanity had accepted its role as the main military force of the Federation with gusto, but in so doing had been causing a good deal of fright for many of the more peaceful races. This, coupled with the pacifistic and once-hegemonic Ivari’s realization that humans would not be easily ruled over had led to increased tensions, something we’d only begun picking up on since we’d come back.

He was worried, understandably, about our species’ increasing militance and similarly worried that finding ourselves in a full blown war, even one with a power that only controlled four systems, would only worsen the problem. The trouble was that these things seemed to truly despise and distrust organic life.

Jake hailed me over a private channel. “That idiot’s going to get the entire crew killed.”

“Maybe not. They’ve got a good code splicer aboard, it could be that they’ll be able to learn something useful…”

Almost as if the universe had been waiting for me to say that in hopes of getting to indulge its fetish for contradicting every optimistic statement Jake or I ever make, projectiles, faster than we could react, began spraying towards the Horizons from hidden weapon emplacements. “TIGER SQUADRON, FANGS OUT!”

We primed weapons and began hammering away at the gun positions, finding all but our most impressive weapons inadequate, our lancer missiles barely getting through. The massive structure shuddered and to our horror, sensors indicated warp drives activating. The massive ship began moving towards the outer reaches of the system, slowly, so slowly.

The captain hailed us. “Tiger Squadron, you are hereby ordered to retreat at once. The Horizons is hit. Worse, the missiles we were hit with…they had payloads of biomatter. We cannot be certain yet, but we will be within minutes. That ship will not be out of the system by then, however you need to be. We’ll continue to transmit data to you about the analysis as we make it, but if it’s what we think it is…we can’t go back. You need to leave and get into personal contact with every human official you respect and tell them to get ready for the worst fight of their existence. You were right. Stars help me, you were right…”

“Captain…what do you think was on those missiles?”

“Kyrrion.” A noise came through then, one that we’d come to associate with Ivari experiencing the purest terror. We sat in silence for a moment, then he spoke, “You two…blessings of the stars and wanderers’ luck go with you. Analysis just came back. This ship is now dead. But…we can slow that monster down. Pilot, prime hyperdrives. We’re going to make a jump to lightspeed straight into that monstrosity. It might not stop it but it’ll buy the galaxy time.”

I was shocked. Jake was silent. “Captain…sorry we doubted you. Good luck. And find peace among the stars.” It was a blessing the Nathians had adopted from Ivari traders for those who died in space.

“Thank you. Go. Warn them now.”

We primed warp drives, and the stars spiraled away around us as we punched into hyperspace…just as the most cataclysmic impact ever recorded happened in the system behind us. The Ivari weren’t warriors. But they, like the Dembra, could still die like heroes.

Flying through hyperspace, I finally spoke. “How does this keep happening? Our parents, Tony, Alicia, the Squadron…now the Seeking Horizons. When will it be our turn? Why do we keep being the ones to dodge the scythe?”

Jake’s voice on the other end sounded strange. “I don’t know. Hopefully not soon. I just…keep flying the way you do, Callie. I’ll fly into a star if I ever have to get into this cockpit and face the stars alone.”

I wanted to tell him that that was absolutely forbidden, that I ordered him to keep living even if I bought it, but…honestly, after everything, I knew that he’d never obey that. And what’s more, that if he went first, I wouldn’t be long in following. Just…too much had happened. All our expectations betrayed, our years of shared trauma, being the only two humans who felt more Nathian most days…

“Same. But we’re still ahead of the scythe for now. Let’s keep it that way. We have to warn everyone, so this doesn’t get any worse.”

We flew the rest of the way in silence.


	4. Too Close

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tiger Squadron founders' idiot tactics get them into trouble

The Synthor megastructure, now designated the Apocrypha by the Terran Republic Navy, in the wake of the explosive final transmissions of Captain Killint and the Seeking Horizons, had managed to be repaired, despite our best efforts. It had repelled every attack we’d managed to throw at it, and destroyed dozens of other fighter squadrons that had been sent in to attack the auto-repair systems. The enemy fighters were getting better and better, withdrawing once we killed a certain number of them but swarming too heavily to allow us to go on offense. To make matters worse, every single maneuver Callie could think of, including the black hole trick, had only worked once. The reality was that the Synthor were adapting with a frightening, calculated perfection, to fighting humans. Third Armada had come to fire on the monster and it had repelled them, forcing them to withdraw, limping, on crippled hyperdrives and badly damaged engines. 

The Apocrypha had taken severe damage during the skirmish but its gunboats, fighters and point defense were enough to keep Callie and I from successfully counterattacking and stopping its repairs.

To make matters worse, the Synthor had apparently plotted a course for the Galri Homeworld. It was closing on the pacifistic life-weavers. It wasn’t much of a question what drove the Synthor to think this was a good idea in their crusade of extermination. A sapient virus capable of guiding its own evolution, infecting a species that could induce controllable self-mutation? It would gain perfect hosts for spreading the contagion beyond where it could be stopped. The Galri had consented, upon hearing this, to their planet being destroyed if they were about to fall, resolving never to be slaves to the enemies of life again.

I brought my ship low, alongside Callie’s. “Callie, the scans the Ivari stealth ship brought have been analyzed. Lion Fleet is going to create a sheet of covering fire to overwhelm their point defense, and other fighter squadrons are going to deploy to keep the enemy off of us while we go in with a compact pair of nova bombs and try to get a shot at the hyperdrives, that should, in theory, bring the engine and reactor to catastrophic failure.”

Callie nodded. “Alright, docking with Lion Fleet.”

****

On the homeworld of the Galri, the whir of machines was never heard. Galri ships were formed of coral, propelled by molluscoid creatures that manipulated gravity to serve as engines. The idea had come from, to hear the tale, a species of space-wandering megafauna that had paused on the Galri world some millennia ago. It was from this peaceful place that Namna and Imdi watched the reports of the onslaught come in.

After once being cruelly torn from their homes and families and forced to serve as incubators for the Vulpexi’s cannon fodder caste, surrounded by machines abhorrent to them, the Galri now faced the possibility of being sent far from home a second time. This time in their own ships, piloted by their own people, to rebuild their lives elsewhere. The Ivari ship Seeking Horizons had been destroyed, and its last transmissions had brought dire tidings of a species that had given up life to become machine, and sought to eradicate all organic life out of a disgustingly misguided sense of mercy. To protect other life from the plague the machines, which had been designated the Synthor, were now spreading, they would force other beings to abandon the sacred flesh and become wholly mechanical. As one, the Galri, and a fellow former Vulpexi slave race, the Palnt, who had come to accept the Galri faith of life over machine, had sworn that they would sooner face the ravages of Kyriion than abandon feeling, connection to life.

The enemy megastructure, which the Humans had referred to as Apocrypha in reference to an old tales of their people related to the end of the world, was coming towards the Galri homeworld, prepared to drop Kyriion on it and eradicate the populace. The humans’ Second and Third armada stood ready to intercept, and word was that the legendary Lion Fleet and Tiger Squadron were doing everything in their power to slow the monster down.

The Galri had made another concession, too. Kyriion, they were told, was a sapient virus capable of altering itself, just as they were. While the Galri would take longer to succumb than most to the virus, they also knew that if any of them did so, the virus would be able to make them nigh-perfect hosts for the end of the rest of the galaxy. As a result, they had resolved. If their world was to fall again, they would not be incubators to enemies of life a second time. The lifesingers had preformed the consecrations. If Kyriion hit their world, they had ordered a nova bombing to wipe them out before they could be used again.

Namna and Imdi stood side by side, watching the situation evolved, and Imdi needed more and more reassurance that xer people were not about to be extinguished as Lion Fleet steadily lost space to the Apocrypha. “You can’t give up hope. The colony I grew up on came under attack by the Vulpexi years ago, and Jake and Callie showed up and destroyed a dreadnaught. They can handle anything. That terror weapon doesn’t stand a chance.”

Imdi looked at her. “You know them, don’t you? You have faith in them?”

“Yes. They’re my clan by adoption. They’ll stop it.”

Imdi accepted this, hoping against hope. 

****

As Tiger Squadron once more tumbled out of the carrier bays armed with greater weapons than ever before, Callie and I surged back into the battle. Unfortunately, a huge cluster of enemy craft were in their way, putting up a sheet of fire that kept them from getting close. The other fighters swept in, doing their duty, and keeping the enemy at bay. We screamed in close to the Apocrypha, which rapidly zeroed its point defense on us, despite our best maneuvers, which were at this point second to none in the galaxy. Callie fired her novabomb in a desperate attempt to silence the enemy guns, she almost certainly assumed I would be the one to deliver the final blow, just like I usually did on capitol class targets, but instead I’d tumbled sideways to avoid the blast, swept up and fired my lancers off before managing to get my Nova bomb into the hyperdrive.

The whole monstrous megastructure shuddered, and blasts tore it from within. It eventually detached the rear half of the ship, which exploded, catastrophically, and the main ship slowly drifted to a halt. “Hell yeah! Tiger Squadron’s done it again!” I had a moment of thinking that Callie and I had done it. Again. Stopped the war, saved the day…then I saw the power flicker back to life on the Apocrypha. “TIGER SQUADRON, FANGS OUT!”

I flared my thrusters the same time she did, trying to get out of range of those penetrator rounds, those darts loaded with Kyriion, and managed to activate hazard suit in case one got inside the ship. “Fuck,” I breathed. “That was too close.”

“Yeah,” she said, quietly, then erupted, “Damnit, what the hell?” Callie’s voice was bitter. Worse…broken. “We did everything we could…no, we did better than anyone else could have and it survives?” We were pulling into the docking bay of Lion Fleet, and Callie paused. “Jake, you need to be on the other side of the airlock, first.”

I felt a chill. “Callie, what are you talking about?”

“It was too close. One of the darts…fucker tagged me. I got the hazmat suit on, but I’ve been exposed. I need to be quarantined until they know if I’m infected and if I am…they’re going to have to space me.”

I froze. “Callie, you’re fine. You have the suit on, and we’ve survived everything this fucking galaxy has thrown at us yet. There’s nothing that’ll finish you. You’ll manage, we were bred on a fucking death world the virus has never met anything like our immune systems, you’ll live.” I was babbling. This was not happening. We were Tiger Squadron. The founding members. We’d beaten dreadnaughts. We’d killed Matras. We’d destroyed the dominion knights. Callie wasn’t going to die. Mortality was for other people. Kyriion wasn’t going to kill her, she was human, humans were special.

“Jake, the other people who’ve been infected…two thirds of them have already died, the others are in critical condition. Just…quarantine, okay?” her voice was firm, and I nodded. “Alright. I’m in my hazmat suit, I’m coming to get you out, okay?”

I gently lifted her out of her cockpit, then ordered the ship to initiate full decontamination of the hangar. “Tiger Squadron officer entering quarantine,” I intoned, my voice flat.

Gases wafted in, clearing the exterior of our suits, allowing us to enter the medical wing. 

Callie was taken out of the hazard suit and put into a bed. Her blood was taken, and the testing began, to see if she was infected. To see if she’d survive.


	5. Lionheart

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shiloh Hendrix is awesome. That is *all*

I repeated myself. “Jake, the infection is positive. I’ve got Kyriion.” 

He hadn’t moved. “Jake, for fuck’s sake just get out of the quarantine room so they can sterilize and deal with the…” He ignored me and stayed where he was.

“Motherfucker, JAKE THAT IS AN ORDER, GET THE FUCK OUT AND LET ME DIE!”

Jake shook his head. “You know what’s funny? You’re, technically, on medical leave. You can’t order shit.” He grinned, clearly forcing it for my benefit.

Tears were starting to come to my eyes and I didn’t want that to be how he remembered me. “Jake, I know you’re not stupid. You know I’m screwed.”

The face plate was at maximum transparency. I saw the tears, then I saw his eyes harden. “I don’t know anything of the sort. We’ve made it through everything else, Callie, we’ll make it through this. I’m not leaving you. If they want to space you, they get to space me too. And since they need ONE OF US to get past the defenses on that monster, they better find a way to keep you alive. Hadn’t they?” 

I blinked. “Wait, they need us still?”

He nodded. “Yeah, the new battle plan requires using a HUGE electro-magnetic pulse to take their fighters offline while a fighter unit goes through, which will strip the shields, heavy firepower to overload their point defense, followed by antimatter torps or nova bombs cracking the heavy shielding over their reactor, with a fighter slipping in using the blast shadow as cover to get a torp into the reactor. And since you and I are the only ones who can pull that off…”

“Jake, you should go do it.” He had to know that was the only way to make what had happened to me mean anything, right?

“I can’t. Actually cannot. There’s not enough concentrated firepower here yet. We’re on the medical support ship for Lion Fleet, but Third Armada took a pasting and we’re waiting on Fourth and Second. I can’t go out and have it matter yet anyway, Callie. And until we know what’s happening, I’m staying with you.”

****

“No.”

“Commander, I know you have certain feelings of attachment to Tiger Squadron personnel, since you have in many ways been a mentor to them as officers, however, you must see that the situation is dire. If Lieutenant Dala is infected she’s likely to die. Her continued presence in such condition is psychologically destabilizing to the remaining member of the Squadron. Why, exactly, have you failed to give mercy?”

Shiloh Hendrix, Commander of Terran Republic special task force, Lion Fleet, was seething as she answered the Ivari consul and the Star Marshall.

“I am not spacing Lieutenant Dala until I know for sure she is beyond hope. I am not going to treat two promising young officers who I have seen grow from random, lucky kids to heroes of the Alliance as cheap throwaways simply because it’s convenient.”

The Ivari consul spoke, “I understand that this is emotionally difficult but both of them have proven, while heroic, fairly unpredictable and often difficult to discipline. I appreciate that these are traits that humans value in reasonable quantities but for one to defy orders to leave the area another, who is doomed by infection, resides within until you agree to quarantine them both is absurd.”

The Star Marshal nodded, “I have to agree. Lt. Dala is likely to die a hero of the Republic, and I doubt that Ensign Anders will be long behind her given his psychological profile. Until then he should be confined to a brig for insubordination.”

Hendrix’s eyes snapped up, and she forced herself to remain calm. “Consul, you’re correct. Those are things humans value in small quantities. And if I recall, you Ivari thought it was ridiculous for us to attack the Vulpexi, and if you’ll kindly notice, the Federation is doing better now because humans are reckless. Don’t ever forget it. As to you, ma’am,” she continued, looking at the Star Marshall’s visage on the comm-screen. “I will not space Lt. Dala, save for post-mortem, and I will not confine Anders to the brig apart from her. And so we’re clear, stripping me of my command won’t help. None of the people in the chain of command for Lion Fleet would answer differently.” She saluted sharply, and held her pose, defiant, until the other two in the conference call disconnected.

****

Imdi was working furiously on the samples of Lt. Dala’s genetics they had, to determine if she could stand against Kyriion’s microbial onslaught. There had been dozens of humans infected, and of those, little over two thirds had died. Namna had heard the report that her brother and sister had been infected, and as was typical for her, she was burying herself in her work, furiously organizing organic ships and mechanical ones alike to take Galri civilians off world until the crisis had passed.

Imdi had realized, early on, that once you isolated the cells responsible for human beings’ incredible immune systems, you could grow more of them matched to each human patient, en masse, and reintroduce them. This would lead to hyper-sensitivity to any autoimmune trouble these humans had for a time, but would also boost their own impressive survival rate against Kyriion. Humans had been shocked, actually, when told that their survival rate against the virus was high since only one in three patients had survived it. Then they’d been told that standard survival rates for those species not bred on death worlds was closer to one in every half billion.

The white cells were being grown fast. Human patients were having them injected, and a massive payload of immunity cells was being sent to the ship where Callie and Jake were, clones of samples taken from Lt. Dala’s body.

Namna was heading up to visit them soon, in full hazmat gear.

***

Jake wasn’t going anywhere. That was starting to piss me off, on one had but on the other I sure as hell didn’t want to die away from him. If I survived this and got my command back I was going to write him up for being a stubborn jackass, then spend a week thanking him for staying with me.

To the readers of this who are Nathian, Ivari, Galri, Dembra, Epomi, or Palnt? I promise that’s actually a normal human response. We’re contradictory fuckers.

Commander Hendrix came in, in hazmat gear as well, and told me that I had a visitor. And that further, she’d issued strict orders. If we tried to leave quarantine before I was cleared, we’d be executed. Simultaneously, anyone who tried to force Jake out of quarantine or attempted to sterilize the room out of fear would be shoved out the most convenient airlock. Which was surprising. So I asked her why she’d taken that chance, since I knew the Star Marshal and Ivari consul were both pretty miffed about her forgiving Jake’s insubordination. 

“Oh, it’s very simple.” The Commander stood stiffly, then said, with zero inflection. “Because I helped train you both as officers of the Terran Republic. You’re my proteges, on my ship and if anyone from any other command structure steps aboard one of my ships thinking for one FUCKING instant that I’d deny you or any stricken crew member a chance to survive this, they’ll find themselves breathing vacuum, no matter if they’re an Ivari, an Admiral, even the fucking Star Marshal herself. Humans do not abandon their own. That is the law of Lion Fleet.”

I thought about Lion Fleet’s battle record. They’d never once failed to retrieve wounded comrades or rescue crew of crippled ships. No matter the risk. Sometimes they could only recover the bodies, but they always recovered something. 

Hendrix cleared her throat. “There is also a visitor. As it happens, the Galri have discovered a potential treatment for infection among humans. About one in three who get it in critical phase of infection survive, we don’t know if the survival rate before critical phase increases more.” 

The door opened behind her and Namna, in full hazmat gear, entered. “Hey guys. Fresh grown immune cells, courtesy of the Galri. For Callie.”

Jake hugged Namna, careful not to tear either suit, and Callie, at this point too weakened by the disease to stand, accepted the biosuited otter-like woman’s hug from her bed, then took the IV of reinforcements for her immune system. 

****

Callie smiled as Imdi reviewed her progress. The main reinforcements had arrived two rotations of the Galri world prior, and were preparing to strike. And as it happened, she was slowly recovering. The other fleets were slowing the Synthor onslaught, and she was starting to think Jake had been right to insist she’d survive this. The days when she’d passed to critical condition had been the worst, there’d been a point where she’d have sworn the virus was talking to her. 

It was not yet confirmed that she was no longer contagious, and she still had some symptoms, so she was being held until she was fully cleared of any viral presence. But she was likely to survive. And once she did, the Synthor were in for a shock. Maybe you couldn’t kill those mechanical bastards the same way twice but it was apparently pretty goddamn hard to kill a human at all.


	6. Unstoppable

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> So for the record, just because something *works* to make Kyriion not kill you does not mean you're safe. The virus learns. But for today, watch Tiger Squadron kick some ass.

Shiloh Hendrix fired scores of missiles, plasma blasts, and coilgun rounds against the Apocrypha, and the monster just kept coming. Lion Fleet had pounded away at the monster, with the help of three different full Armadas. Right now damage was being done, and ships were being lost, rapidly. As many as could be recovered were, and more and more reserve ships were thrown into the breach. Commander Hendrix was holding the line while keeping her own ships maneuvering rapidly to avoid being hit, a trick that the commanders of the other armadas seemed to be struggling with, though they were keeping the Apocrypha in the field of fire pretty effectively. Now that it had entered the Galri home system, it was at best a day and a half before it got into firing range with its viral payloads.

The damage being done forced the ship to divert power to auto-repair systems to continue moving and that certainly had advantages, as long as it did that it was being slowed down badly. 

“All batteries, fire!” 

Unfortunately, it wasn’t going to matter for too much longer. A day and a half before it closed. And since the rate of damage from the other fleets would not remain constant as they had to pull off and repair or lost ships, it was going to actually be less than that.

It felt like an eternity. Gigawatt laser bursts forming netlike patterns kept the lethal darts from penetrating the ship, often immolating Kyriion payloads before they arrived, which had forced the Synthor to shift to more conventional attacks, which tore open hulls, forcing crews to be rescued, and several times preformed critical kills on ships, causing catastrophic reactor failures that consumed ships in nuclear fire.

The Apocrypha was going to reach the planet. All they could do was buy time for the evacuation. The fighter component, absent being used for a critical stroke, could only be wasted, lives lost for nothing. And if Tiger Squadron could not deploy soon, they’d be forced to use fighter swarms to accomplish the task in a last ditch effort to stop the Synthor’s death stroke.

Missiles, coil gun rounds, plasma bolts, everything they had streaked towards the target and tore away chunks of metal, but it wasn’t enough…

***

Callie started laughing. “Fully clear of live virus. It’s all gone. Jake, you were right.” They were quickly sterilized as they stepped out of the quarantine ward. Her strength was coming back quickly, and it was starting to be theorized that Kyriion’s effects on the skeletal structure derived from nerve damage. It took a while for her limbs to stop tingling like they’d all fallen asleep at once, but she was back. She gave Jake a quick kiss to celebrate the fact that they could touch again. Namna had hugged her as well, and now she was stepping back into the flight suit. “Alright, when this is over Jake, we have earned some time off. For now, let’s finish this.”

Together, the two surviving members of Tiger Squadron remounted their Sabers, and began igniting the engines, their usual song playing in synch with the moment.

****

A burst of static on the comms, and through the view screen, two new signatures were matched to two red-and-blue striped Sabers. From the comms came a voice. A female voice. “Hey, guys, this is Lieutenant Dala, sorry we took so long. Fuckers had us for a minute. But that’s the thing about tigers. If you’re going to catch one by the tail, you better put it out quick.”

Shiloh started laughing. She just…couldn’t stop. “Alright. All units, EMP voidburst mines, fire into heavy enemy concentration, prepare nova bombs for breaching. Execute the plan, we have zero margin for error!”

Ensign Anders spoke next, with a phrase that the Vulpexi Dominion’s navy had added to their lexicon as a signal to retreat. “Tiger Squadron, FANGS OUT!”

****

I was BACK! Jake was still smug about how he’d been right that I wasn’t going to die but you know what? Never been happier to see his smug grin. The pulse stripped our shields and made the enemy fighters temporarily stall, unable to move or fire as we streaked past them, merely dodging. Lasers were scything them away as we went, as we dodged between the beams and frozen hulks of enemy fighters. Huge warheads blew past us, as we swept out and away from the blast radius, riding it at the ragged edge of disaster.

The blast gave an unintended boost, sending us spinning out wider than intended, which…on the one hand made the last few point defense shots from that sector of the Apocrypha miss, on the other hand it swept us into the line of sight of the rest, which were starting to come back online. Flying over the now open reactor zone, which had little enough armor left on it that the antimatter torpedoes would be more than enough to get through it.

We got distance dived hard towards the target zone, firing torpedoes in timed synchronicity, pulling up and punching to short range warp just as the bombs went off. We punched back into real space at the end of the system while the Apocrypha tore itself apart behind us, consumed with silver-white actinic flame in the eerily silent explosions typical of space. 

“Tiger Squadron reporting in. Target neutralized. We’re back in the game, guys.”

***

“In the aftermath of what would come to be known as the Kyriion Crisis, Tiger Squadron went to ground on the Nathian colony they’d been raised on. The few Synthor who survived the annihilation of the Apocrypha were hunted down and killed, their Kyriion weaponry destroyed. Political crises in the Terran Republic led a group of wealthy humans and some partners from the Vulpexi Dominion Remnant had created a pseudo-independent megacorporation state. Contact was eventually made with the Keldebriar Confederacy, now highly-structured and heavily militarized in the aftermath of their isolation.

Some humans went to the Galri worlds and took up their religion. The life-forged technology was liberating, and there was a quick alliance made between them and the Epomi. Dembra and Palnt, as the Palnt slowly returned to their machining roots, gained a similarly friendly interaction. The Nathians? They continued forging alliances, often bringing along human ambassadors as guards or as assistants in diplomacy, as human pack bonding was a well-known phenomenon.

It was, however, the Ivari who came out of the situation diminished. Their once unquestioned position as head state of the Alliance was more and more challenged. If it was the Dembra and Palnt who would be the chiefs of industrial production, the Epomi and Galri who provided most of the medicine and food, the Nathians who were the chief diplomats and the humans who would be fighting and dying in any conflict, what right other than history did the Ivari claim to power? Especially in the aftermath of the revelation that they’d kept many secrets, there were greater and greater political pressures for other nations to take the lead.

And of course, the stories of humans surviving the omnicidal sapient plague that had once all but annihilated the galaxy brought only further legends forth about the unstoppable beings born and bred on death worlds.

They say nothing’s immortal. They say nothing can’t be stopped. They point to Kyriion could be, after millennia of being an unquestioned terror. They point to the fact that the Apocrypha could be stopped, despite being nearly indestructible and capable of repairing itself. They point to the Vulpexi Dominion as having been torn down after centuries of dominating everything around it.

They fail to account for the fact that none of the above opponents stopped humans.”

- _The Titans of Terra – a history of Humanity in space_ , as reported by reformist Vulpexi Scholar, Endirmas, galactic standard date 4327.29.35


End file.
